You Made the Wrong Call. Now What? The Psychology of Owning It Without Breaking.

She had championed the hire for three months. Pushed back on the sceptics in the room. Argued for the candidate's potential over their experience. Staked something, not formally, but in the way that matters more, her judgment, her credibility, her read of people. 

What she did in the seventy-two hours that followed, when the decision proved wrong, is what leadership self-awareness actually looks like in practice: not the public handling of a difficult situation, but the private examination of what drove it.

Six months later, she was sitting in a conversation that confirmed what she had suspected for eight weeks: it was not going to work. The role was a poor fit for the person. The person was not a good fit for the role. The decision had been wrong. She knew it on Tuesday. She told the team on Friday.

What she wanted, in the hours between Tuesday and Friday, was simple. She wanted to find the version of events in which the decision had not been entirely hers. The candidate's references had been strong. The panel had agreed. The circumstances at the time had narrowed the options. All of it was true. None of it made the decision feel any less personal. She was looking for the story that let her off the hook. And she knew that was what she was doing.

What stopped her was a question she had not planned to ask herself: what would it mean to own this completely? Not the public version of owning it, the clear message to the team, the structured plan for the transition, the professional handling of a difficult situation. She was already drafting that. The other version. The internal one. The honest accounting of what she had missed, what she had overridden, what she had wanted to be true badly enough to let it shade her assessment.

That examination was harder. Because it did not end with a plan, it ended with an answer she did not entirely like.

Guilt vs. Shame in the Executive Office

Brene Brown's research draws a distinction that most organisational settings collapse into a single concept. 

• Guilt says I did something wrong. 
• Shame says I am doing something wrong. 

The leader who processes a failure through shame is not positioned to learn from it. They are positioned to defend against it through rationalisation, minimisation, and the quiet revision of the story until the version that remains is bearable.

She recognised, in that Tuesday-to-Friday window, that she was doing both. The guilt was productive. The shame was not. The shame was the part that wanted to find the story that let her off the hook. The guilt was the part that kept pulling her back to the honest question.

What she surrendered was not accountability. She was going to hold herself accountable regardless. What she surrendered was the need for the story to be clean. The honest version was messier. 

She had wanted the candidate to be right. She had let that wanting influence her reading of the evidence. She had heard the sceptics and given them less weight than they deserved because proving the unconventional call right felt like something worth proving. That was the real decision. Not the hire. The motivation underneath it.

The Precision of Naming Patterns

The conversation with the team on Friday was harder than it needed to be, and more honest than it might have been. She did not perform the clean version. She said she had got it wrong, examined why, and explained what she would do differently in the next hiring decision.

The unexpected reward was not absolution. It was precision. She came out of it knowing something specific about how she makes decisions under social pressure, a pattern she had not named before. And naming it made it available.

Failures become capability when you examine them honestly. They become scar tissue when you manage them instead.

The Within Pages® Leadership Series includes structured modules on courage, decision-making, and feedback, designed to help leaders examine their choices, process their failures, and build the internal architecture for genuine accountability. 

Explore the series at withinpagesjournal.com. Bundle USD $349. Individual volumes from USD $159. For consulting and coaching practices, available to license at withinpagesjournal.com.

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This article was prepared by the Within Pages® editorial team, dedicated to making leadership and professional growth accessible worldwide. © 2026 Within Pages®. The Reflective Edge. All rights reserved. Follow Within Pages® on LinkedIn or visit https://withinpagesjournal.com/ for more reflections on leadership and professional growth. This article was originally published on The Reflective Edge – Within Pages® (https://withinpagesjournal.com/blogs/the-reflective-edge)

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Sources:

• Brown, B. (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection. Hazelden.
• Brown, B. (2018). Dare to Lead. Random House.
• Brown, B. (2020). Brene on Shame and Accountability. Unlocking Us Podcast.